Picture a game of polo. Now, take away the champagne, strawberries, hats, heels and even the ponies, because there’s a growing craze in London for a grittier, hardcourt version of the game – and its players ride on two wheels.
Bike polo involves hitting a small ball into a goal using a long mallet, but aside from this it has little in common with its older brother. The game began in Ireland in 1891 and was even featured as a demo sport at the 1908 Olympics, but its urban resurgence didn’t start in London until 2006, when it arrived from New York. It’s now growing, with about 25,000 regular players in 370 cities worldwide – the London Hardcourt Bike Polo Association was founded in 2009.
The rules are easy. Two teams of three players ride around a hard court on specially adapted bicycles and battle to be the first to score five goals. A game is played in ten-minute bursts and can take hours or minutes, depending on skill levels. Tackles are ‘like on like’ – bike to bike, mallet to mallet, or body to body.
LHBPA players meet most days in locations across London for drinks and ‘throw-ins’ (when anyone can show up and throw their mallet into a pile to be picked for a team). The players I met at one such event last week were a far trendier bunch than their jodhpur-wearing counterparts, swigging beer, smoking, and discussing the latest bike parts they had built themselves (most players are velocipede fanatics – the most common route into the game is through the tight-knit London bike community). Luckily, they were also patient, as I wobbled around on one of their precious bikes.
Swinging a mallet makes it difficult to keep balanced without core muscles of steel, and the bikes are very light and responsive. Beginners are welcome but although I was assured they can progress quickly, most of the moves I saw would be hard for your average cyclist – hopping around on two wheels and pivoting on a sixpence. But it’s great exercise, and it was satisfying to hear the thwack of my stick on the ball amid my team’s cheers. It may not be the sport of kings, but it’s a hell of a lot more fun.
For details of beginners’ classes, visit lhbpa.org
